Saturday, April 05, 2008

More On Wikipedia

Professors Should Embrace Wikipedia--If the Web is the greatest information delivery device ever, and Wikipedia is the largest coherent store of information and ideas, then we as teachers and scholars should have been on this train years ago for the benefit of our students, our professions, and that mystical pool of human knowledge. Wikipedia as we know it will undoubtedly change in the coming years as all technologies do. By involving ourselves directly and in large numbers now, we can help direct that change into ever more useful ways for our students and the public. This is, after all, our sacred charge as teacher-scholars: to educate when and where we can to the greatest effect.~Mark A. Wilson, professor of geology at the College of Wooster.

BBC NEWS--Wikipedia survives research test: The free online resource Wikipedia is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopedia Britannica, a study shows. The British journal Nature examined a range of scientific entries on both works of reference and found few differences in accuracy.See related, previous CD post here.

4 Comments:

I recall once suggesting to a professor from University of Toronto that the ultimate tool for education was the internet. "Imagine what the world would be like if a person in Bangladesh could obtain a degree from the University of Toronto".

Its amazing how many results come back from googling a phrase like "wikipedia flawed,"...

Note the following from CNN Technology: It's one of the top 10 most-visited sites worldwide, with over 2 million articles in its English language edition. But is online encyclopedia Wikipedia's strength -- that anyone can edit it -- also its greatest weakness?...LOL!

You should see Wiki's take on Hugo Chavez. Apparently, the only folks who are truly evil are conservatives like Mary Anastasia O'Grady. (They are careful about taking on Charles Krauthammer because he won a pulitzer).

Wikipedia is just another outlet for the San Francisco Democrats. Given the left leanings of most universities, it is hardly surprising that academics are so accustomed to this type of bias that it doesn't even register on the radar screens.

The wonderful thing about the internet is that there are many ways to verify data and assess bias. The left's stranglehold on the media has been broken by millions of internet users. Call it the silent majority.

Not even a totalitarian government can stop people from finding out things on the web.